Landing in this moment
finding my spot right here
turning and turning
wriggling adjusting
feeling around this spot
pressing down the earth
breathing in out in out
loosening my grip on whatever
once seemed important
landing finally in this very
particular moment and
suddenly here I am.
My days all cracked apart, changed, rearranged
and though I know it’s temporary and all to the good
I wonder if it’s worth all this, the exhaustion, the forgetting,
the crazy upset of my apple cart newness, not of course as in
giving birth or finding oneself suddenly broken and beaten in an overturned car
no, not at all at all, but nevertheless jarred by this self-imposed change.
Okay it is really July 31 and I am only here to say that I FORGOT my poem AGAIN!
Apologies . . . .
No cicadas singing this wet morning and I am learning
some things about them possibly two of which are that
a) cicadas unlike Gene Kelly do not sing in the rain and
b) perhaps even when wet cicadas are simply not in the mood
for mating unlike beautiful young people in films who
find themselves overtaken by romantic urges after skipping
and laughing through a drenching rain and therefore
I feel that cicadas must not be very much like us after all.
One after the very other summer day falls open
like a book, swoops aside the heavy curtains
and the overbearing sun takes center stage refusing,
aging prima donna that she is, to step down for even
one performance in deference to her cloudy understudy.
I wonder if I will always note that this was the date
upon which my friend died now two years ago.
The moon was full that night, there was no drought
and it was certainly not as hot then as it is now.
I saw a colleague of hers the other day
who said he’d thought of her recently.
I think of her every day,
I said and he looked rather startled.
Words and phrases that passed
from her everyday language into
mine and mine to hers I suppose
that is the biggest culprit as we
were both always keen on words.
I noted in my journal that in those last days
out of her head and drugged with morphine
the word poem popped into her ramblings
again and again not so surprising as she
was likely writing one in her head even then.
A smidgen of rain and the cicadas
have fallen silent. In their stead I heard
a pileated woodpecker, followed its call
and caught a glimpse after all these months
considered myself once again quite lucky
only to then spy a pair of indigo buntings
as we came out of the woods.
Double luck on this day oh triple luck
as we must oh we so must count the rain!
I am sorry to say that on this day I broke my 589 day streak of writing a poem every single day–not on purpose, not by plan or arrangement or pre-meditation but by sheer forgetfulness. I am sorry to report it and disappointed that it happened but it’s true. In my defense I will say that I’ve been working very hard on my book, which will contain poems from 8/27/10-8/27/11. But still. No poem was written on July 25 and I’m not going to cheat. I will continue on, however!
Every day there are twelve if not twice that many
turkey vultures hovering, wheeling, kettling above
that very same spot of creek and bluff
so many of them and all together you’d think
that if they did spot some piece of carrion
the chance of any one having a meal would
be pretty slim. And yet there they are
and have been every day in every season
at that same exact spot, faithful as the sun,
causing me to pause and wonder each day.
So much of the natural world is a mystery
to me, beyond my understanding, beloved,
marvelous, a box of riches available to
little old me at my whim and behest.
I wonder why and how cicadas sing in unison as they do
their loud hum rising and falling as it does almost
as one, as if led by a tuxedo-wearing conductor
a flash mob of them hidden in their various perches
in tree and shrub joining their voices in chorus.
I wonder too whether I will notice their
closing performance before autumn falls
whether there is an actual last day and if so when
it might be and finally whether or not I will
ever stop my wondering and if so why.